WOW - I just read, in another thread, that 999 (aka Peace, Bruce, etc.) actually LOADED THE ENTIRE MOAB to test Max's new cloud computing virtual machine. Perhaps in a few months when he finishes reading it he'll post a comment.

Well, Amos, here I am on a not too bad evenin' in my office, goin' over my files. I have a half full glass of whiskey in fronta me. I got a good life, lotsa friends, a great gal, and a flourishin' career. I got the respect of my peers and the plaudits of my community. Too bad you don't get to share in any of this, but you made yer choice. Yer choice is to deny my existence. Fine. Too bad for you, Roscoe, cos you just stepped right outta my world and into the dark limbo of yer own denial. You are no one, mister. Got that? No one. Nadie'. You don't even cast a shadow. You leave no genetic traces behind. Yer nothin' in my world.

Chonga, sweetheart, baby -- if I stop thinking of YOU you'll vanish with even a whimper. Your existence will be as if you never were, less than a whiff of cigar smoke in a tornado. You exist only because I will it to be so -- and Amos, too. In fact, EVERYTHING exists because I wish it so, even myself. I brought myself and everything else into existence because I willed it.

Perhaps I'll stop thinking about it long enough that your trigger finger will disappear. Will that convince you that I'm telling it to you straight?

Fat chance, Rap. You got things turned right around backwards. I didn't think of YOU in the context of this here thread between 2:39 and 7:24 today, and where was you? Hmm? I don't see a word from you on this thread durin' those approximate 5 hours, and ya know why? Coz I willed you right out of existence by not thinkin' about you. Yer very existence depends on MY will. I letcha back in at 7:25.

Now get down on yer knees and say 50 "Hail Chongo"s...or I'll do it again. For a longer period of time.

And I made ya say it wrong. I also made ya disappear for several seconds right before I posted this. Didn't notice, didja?

Of course not! How would you be able to notice when you wasn't there to notice? ;-D Ook! Ook!

See, this is the thing. You ain't actually been around for about half the time in the past 6 months cos I just disappear you whenever the whim hits me, but you never even noticed, cos as soon as I bring ya back, everything seems "normal". I mean normal in yer terms....which is like abnormal in most people's terms.

For all you know, you might not be there tomorrow, but then you'll be back the day after. It's all up to me. Nobody else notices either, cos I control all of it, see?

There. How do ya like gettin' yer own line back? Hmm? Sounds familiar, don't it?

Notice how I made ya say it wrong again, Rap? I do that to embarrass you. I find it amusin' to get the world thinkin' you are a deeply prejudiced man who wallows in specist slurs, instead of lettin' 'em see that you actually love and respect all apes and monkeys and wish you was more like them. Why do I do this? Well, I am helpin' you pay off yer sins, see? You done a lotta bad things in this life and in some of yer previous lives, and I am gonna help you pay it all off and start off again with a clean slate, by embarrassin' the hell out of you in various ways, ways accomplished through my Divine Will.

I might make you take off all yer clothes and run around in the downtown of Pocatello yellin' "I'm a little scrunchy! I'm a little scrunchy!" until the cops arrest you and haul you away to the funny farm.

Or I might not. Haven't yet quite decided about that one.

Note how the completely fictional being known as "Amos" at least has the honesty to admit that he don't live in my world. He got that right. Amos is a pallid mental construct, see? He has no real corporeal existence in any world, but he does caper around in a sorta hypothetical dream-like dimension that is just a step removed from Bedlam on one side and Woody Allen's rapid-eye movement phases on the other. Woody has been seein' his shrink for some time about that, cos he don't like California much. He wants the Amos character in his dreams to relocate to Manhattan. I could make this happen, but I ain't ready to. I enjoy lissenin' to Woody kvetch and whine and carry on about it while he is layin' on the psychiatric couch.

There has been some confusion lately about the exact wording of the Hail Chongo, a traditional prayer uttered by humans who are showing contrition for their sins of specism and their exclusionary thinking and behaviour, as well as for their sins in a more general sense.

According to the New International version of the Book of Kong, translated from its original Mangani, these are the words, in English:

Hail Chongo, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst primates, and blessed is the fruit of thy table, as well as the whiskey in thy cupboard and the cigars in thy desk drawer. May thine ammo never run out. O Chongo, foremost among gumshoes, pray for us wretched sinners, now and at the hour of our death, whether it be by the knife, the fist, the gun, the noose or the bottle. Amen.

Highfalutin furbelows not withstanding, the screeds of inane puerile narcissism being generated from the over-heated brain pan of one of our Canadian friends and filtered though the fictitious identity of a talking bow-legged flea-bitten poopflinging simian with pretensions of grandiosity are --however infantile--always good for a condescending grin from homo sapiens sapiens, the guys one notch up the development tree. Its hard tobelieve we share over 99 per cent of our genome with such almost-beens. But thanks for the grin, anyway. Go poof! and I'll catch you back in the Dream Time.

Could you for once talk without spicing up the text with over-inflated hyperbolic bloviation of the most extreme sort, mon frer? Yes, I can understand it. I've spent a lifetime studying examples of oratorical excess. But think of the demoralizing effect it may have on others who haven't! For God's sake, man, have pity on them!

I understood every word Amos inscribed herein. Perhaps that is due to my profundity, or my apprehensability, or my continuous cultivation and self-disciplining in the quest for the Eternal Whatever. But again I might simply read too much and have way too much education, knowledge, and yes, wisdom for understanding by mere mortals.

But Amos is correct, and I for one would rather be among the 1% than among the 99% who do not have what it takes to climb to the top of the tree. Of course, the 99% (which includes Chonga) will never know the difference any more than a fish apprehends the water in which it lives.

Ah, yes, the comforts of the Ivory Tower intellectual lifestyle! I understand all too well. I too used to delight in confounding the common herd by using words like "jejeune" "outre'" and "ennui" whenever the opportunity presented itself. It made me feel so.....special. And I loved the blank looks I would get from the girls at the donut shop checkout. ;-) But then I realized that I was becoming hardhearted, detached, supercilious, dismissive...even, dare I say it...vain!

I fear that the same thing could happen to Amos. I wouldn't want that to happen to a good fellow like him. Therefore I keep encouraging him to avoid the heady temptations that come treading stealthily neath the cloak of higher learning, just waiting to turn the unwary aspirant into an upperclass twit of the most intolerable sort!

After all, that sort of thing got people beheaded in the French Revolution, you know, and shot in the Russian one! We must eschew the temptation to indulge in obscure and tendentious verbiage. It leads to terrible things in the end.

Is it true that scientists at the University of Toronto have successfully managed to cross-breed Shame McBride with himself, thereby creating the world's greatest genetic catastrophe (fortunately both impotent and sterile)?

Nah, that ape is just a canary. He ain't worth the powder to blow him away, which is why I haven't put the mugs I know in Chi onto him. I mean, he puts "Windy" in the "Windy City." Not even the cops listen to him any more. He ain't had a case in a coon's age and couldn't follow a skirt or a shirt if he was hired in a divorce thing. He's just a punk who thinks he's big time and one of these days the big boys are gonna take him down just because of his big mouth. Last I heard, back a couple weeks ago, he was spending his time in Duffy's alright...workin' with an organ grinder.

Trained by the best, dude, trained by the best. At least Chongo is working -- he used to be cadging drinks by walking on his hands when he was drunk, juggling a ball with his feet. It was "funnier'n hell when he tried that, with him fallin' over all the time and all," as one anonymous drinker told me.

Just back from the Legion Hovel, where they are trying to get the traditional 25' tall Christmas tree through the traditional 32" wide door into a room with a traditional 10' ceiling accompanied by the traditional cussing.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Deerslayer "Mother of All BS" tale.

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the Deerslayer "Mother of All BS" tale.

Chongo and Amos have been slagging each other off for some time, both by asserting that the other has no place or significance in their world. It's like one of those Laurel and Hardy skits where they have a disagreement about something and they keep upping the ante with escalating reprisals of one sort or another. Take no notice.

The truth of the matter is that Little Hawk, as he approaches his second childhood, is slowly losing his ability to differentiate between the universe of the real and the universe of the imagined. This is typically symptomatic of early=onset Gerund Disorder. In any case, he becomes upset if anyone corrects him by pointing out that Chongo is not a flesh and blood creature. BEst to just humor or ignore him on this issue. He seems to have held on to his usual level of near-competency on other topics except for political matters.

Yes, and I am very proud of my near-competency! ;-D But you wrong me, sir. I am approaching my third childhood. My second childhood began around the time I got the idea that finding the right woman would make me gloriously happy for the rest of my life! I finally disabused myself of that bizarre notion after several involvements...experienced a few short years of relative sanity...then lurched into the onset of my 3rd childhood, which is where you find me now.

Hey guys, looks like winter might finally arrive. Will one of you go knock the chunk of 2x4 out of the window jamb so MOM doesn't get cold in her room tonight? And reach up on that high shelf in the closet and get another quilt to throw on her bed. And LH, let that dachshund out to pee before bedtime so he doesn't leave a puddle on the carpet again.

Know that I, Simon of Rottinham, do yis dai put penne to papre and committ to riting all that I hast lernt of defense et attacke during mi long and honirable careere in ye military armes. I do yis so yt ye info might not be lost to the ken of mortal menne nor or mortal womenne eiyer. By doing yis I hast made it so yt ye-all will not have to reinvente ye wheele, so to speake.

Know ye yt ye best defense ist ye good ofense, and take up to live as best as ye can to my stile of life, as e’en my gud wyfe doy say, Ye art ye most offensif wight who ne’er wiped shoen before y-comin in from ye mud and slyme of ye barnyard. And yen she doth hitteth me with ye spyder, ye pot, ye skyllet, and ye pan. Learn that e’en being ye best ofensif doth no always prevail, e’en tho’ ‘tis said to be ye best defens.

And take ye oeroes, and grind them fyne, and mix with 2 parts of oereos so ground 3 parts of sand and wette ye same wiy bullock’s blud sufficient, and ye wals made with yis most excellente siment or mortyr will withstand ye trebuchet, ye oranger, ye mining, ye 175 mm goone howitzere and wilt, if mixes aright, e’en turn thy M1A1 tanke of Abrams.

And best for ye defensee when confronted by ye force superiore too one’s own, is to droppeth thy breeches, grasp thy ankles with thy handes, right to right and left to left, and laboring ahard at it, swingeth betwen thy own legges, and kisseth thy arse goodby. Rember, yo, yat yere be no dishonour in running to fight another daye.

Stilly, you have given sage advice there. Yes, Dachshunds always pee on the carpet, NOT on the bare floor! They find it better that way, rotten little things that they are. Persuading them to go out on a cold night isn't easy. A measure of force is usually required.

Every dachshund owner I know (and I know several) shovels the yard clear of snow and puts a series of overhead electric heater up so the poor little things can do what they need to do in comfort. During snowy or rainy weather they protect the poor little darling with an umbrella. Daisy Gnedddenhutten was electrocuted last winter when the umbrella she was carrying over her Precious Pepper touched the heating elements of an overhead electric heater; Precious Pepper wouldn't go out again for a couple of hours after that tragedy.

I'm not saying that you should go so far as to electrocute yourself for dachshunds, LH, but certainly you must have the dog's "grounds" arranged as above and so do be careful carrying the umbrella.